


The Disappearance of The French One

by craicslave



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other, Trans Male Character, columnist louis, free form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craicslave/pseuds/craicslave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Louis. This is Harry. Two separate entities with personal lives, with mere glances between them. This is Louis and Harry. They meet and then they don't meet for a while after that. This is LouisAndHarry. Even though they are reunited they have a language barrier between them and Harry is a small bird with broken wings and Louis' palms might not be warm enough to nurture him back to health.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Disappearance of The French One

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know what this is. It's not even written as a fanfic, it's a collection of Louis' columns and Harry's diary entries and you don't really know what's what. Most of the beginning is in French, but it disappears with time. My main motif was to explore character development and I think I kind of nailed that. You can see Louis' style of writing improving and acquiring a better flow. Harry's French fades with time and he becomes more sure of himself and his endeavours.

**This is Louis. This is Harry.**

**Louis**

**“Socio-economical segregation as educational dampeners” - 21 August, 2013**

Nine out of ten pupils in Great Britain have a mother tongue different from English  – another language crammed in the same space some of us hold only one. Yet, statistics condemn schools with highly populated bilingual students as detrimental for educational development. At the same time, schools across Europe, including the UK, aim to graduate its pupils with more than one language in their bank. The most paradoxical part of it all is that if given the privilege, parents would choose to distance themselves from bilingual schools as well as neighbourhoods. Let’s come out and say it, it’s rich privilege segregation.

The eldest and only boy amongst an infinite amount of sisters, I grew up on the outskirts of Doncaster where things were very diverse. My single mother couldn’t afford any better. The first sign: if she was given the choice she would not have us in the neighbourhood we were in. My parents would have many fights over who’s turn it was to pay for my school uniform, my mothers only wish was for my dad to chip in. Instead I inherited some from my next door neighbour who was a year under me but was a head taller. The second sign: the socio-economic demographic forced to attend these schools.

Zayn Malik, professor in culture geography, sits down for tea with me to discuss some of my childhood experiences. He informs me that I am lucky to have come from a monolingual and ethnically British household. The mere shadows in my memories, those individuals with lives and parents that were not as privileged as mine, probably had more creativity and lingual intelligence than I ever will but were cast away for my benefit. Education is a poor pupils only chance to climb the ladder of prosperity, but public resources are still devoted to educate those that are better off or are more easily thought to be better off. Professor Malik goes on to support this by claiming that even the teachers in these neighbourhood lean towards the monolingual and ethnically British pupils. He says, “these families know that their children will be schooled to be segregated in education and society, it is therefore safer and more comfortable for their children to live in a neighbourhood with a collective of fellow segregated pupils.”

In college there was a guy a few years younger than me, I don’t think he knew a lick of English. I watched him isolated from his classmate and eating alone during lunch breaks. One time he borrowed my locker because he had forgotten his key and I took the chance to invite him to party. He had refused and I started believing he was causing his own solitariness. Weeks went by and I kept an eye on him, I was a witness to the cruel behaviour of his classmates towards him. In retrospect, I see how I was wrong and how he was segregated by his classmates due to his ineptitude of the english language. Very similar to how schools with a concentrated amount of ethnically British students would segregate foreign students that would be introduced to their schools. 

We both agree that in a democratic society people would not be forced by socio-economic factors to be kept to certain neighbourhoods. Professor Malik goes on to add that the two signs about the unfairness of the educational system due to socio-economic disadvantages could be surpassed by me, but not by many other individuals I attended college with. Maybe it is time for a forced integration at a young age to nurture a future generation with less barriers between them due to race, religion, mother tongue, or any other differences. Or support to healthy separatism that develops young student in an environment they feel comfortable in. But the upper class will never step into our neighbourhoods, and we are too scared to take the extra few minutes on the bus to a snobby school.

**Harry**

**“Diary Entry #1” - February 28, 2010**

Bonjour, Hi,

My teacher told me to write in English a diary. Je n’aime pas la langue anglaise, elle est très terne et ils sont racistes et gras… Dull. Boring. Without colour. C’est morne et sans la romance comme nous, les Français, le français: «la langue d’amour». The weather is gris, tous les jours. God is crying on this people, He hates them as much as me. Or maybe it is pee of God on them, I would pee more than cry on this people too.

Mon père hates me, il est convaincu que je suis le diable parce que je ne suis comme les garçons in my school. Il sait pas que je suis pas un garçon. Mais, it’s fine, je me déteste aussi. Il est 2 heures du matin et mes parents n’arrêtent pas de se battre et je suis très FUCKING TIRED !! They are fighting since après dinner because my mother was showering then i was showering and in the shower there is a broken mirror now. It is one of it that is sucked on the wall, vous comprenez, and it fell even after I went out. And, now i cannot shower for three weeks as le châtiment parce que j'ai volé une banque, not just fell a mirror when i wasn’t even there, non? I am scared to do anything or turn on the light, I don’t know if these words are coming together correctement on the paper. I hate being afraid of my father. Here is a poem i sculpté sur mes poignets:

I hate my father

he is fat ugly and i want him to burn in hell

when i fry my eggs in the morning i let it burn to imagine it is his head

sometimes his tie or i will put his empty wallet in the oven and watch it burn

i hate this psychopathe

Aujourd'hui, jai oublié my key to my locker at home, I took the bag and the jacket to classroom and everyone had their eyes on the floor. I asked people for keeping my things in theirs for today but they come up with des mensonges… Mais j’ai recontré quelqu’un de très gentil, he is in three years ahead of me and beautiful. Je l’observe un bout, et je me please à imaginer la vie qu'il doit vivre. Qu'aime-t-il faire de ses temps libres? Is his parents crazy like mine? Does his father hate him and want him dead like mine? Does he sculpter des poème sur son poignet? But he is beautiful and does nothing like that I know! His eyes were blue like the sky is on a sunny day over the Eiffel tower and he shines brighter than the sun. I think if his name was an emotion it would be happiness and even though I have never talked to him before when I see him the inside of me smile. That is all I know about myself today, I like this boy because he is nice to me and no one ever is. This is the first time he has talked to me but i always look on him when i walk to school. À mon premier jour au lycée je l'ai vu devant le bâtiment de l’école. I will never forget him even though it is dumb to remember someone you have seen a few times at college.

He gave me his key. This is a reason to never forget someone, non? He said come to a party tonight but I know dad will kill me if i am not home after school, he calls me and i have to send pictures because he says i lie. Father wants me to have friends and be normal, mais he won’t let me go out. It’s like a mental prison he puts me in, he fools my body that it is free when i get home i realise how trapped i am really. Je pense, he think i am with boys. His fear is I will kiss a boy but no one wants to kiss me and i will kiss no one for the rest of my life. Je mourrai avant d’être aimé.

J'entends papa, i think he is coming to my room.

J’ai peur. Very afraid.

**Louis**

**“Rich children plus poor children equal a detrimental future” – 14 November, 2013**

I grew up in the neighbourhoods the politicians condemn and wish to tear down, I grew up in the neighbourhoods the upper class wants to wipe out so their inhabitants won’t way down on their conscience. I grew up in the brick houses they want to drive a wrecking ball through. They want to erase instead of gentrify. They do not bother to put their money on repiping the neighbourhood so we can wash our dishes and our clothes at the same time.

The problem is that they regard us as rats that need expulsion, but they do not stop to think where we might go. Where will the drunk that lived two houses from me live? How will the single mothers and unemployed immigrants, with many talents that are being refused on the job market, afford any other place? What will become of the street I grew up on, that had no lights because no one would bother fixing them? The detrimental factor for civilisations are humans themselves, powerful people do not care for a self-sufficient communities they cannot control.

Now, I live in a house with no one on the other side of the wall but a lawn, encaged within the picket white fence that lines my property. I have been in my house for three days now without a single person coming to check on me, whilst in my old neighbourhood you would be checked on if you had not been around for a day. Politicians want us gone because they do not understand what our neighbourhoods are. They do not, and will never, grasp the compassion and love that exists and must be preserved in these places. Therefore, I still identify with my past more than my comfortable present. I wonder if the same neighbours are still there or if they have gotten out, just like me, but still long for the very tight and bad conditions we were living under. It is comical how my current neighbours have accepted me, how everyone believes I pertain to the lower upper class, whilst in fact my gut refuses to give me away to the luxurious standards I have become accustomed to. It is even visible in my behaviour.

I still use bags from grocery stores for the bins and buy in bulk. My eyes always travel to the sales part of the freezer at Tesco even though I can very well afford the extra pound for the milk that will last me longer. Before travelling I make sure that there isn’t anything better I can put my money on. And I always feel bad when I find myself tanning under the Moroccan sun or freezing my toes off in the Austrian Alps. When I was little our summers were usually spent at the nursing home a few hours from us. My mother would always say, “we must always remember to pay homage to our elders.” They taught me how to dance and play the piano. My trips now only teach me how much to tip in different parts of the world.

It is incredibly hard to even begin repairing the damage that has been done to the lopsided geographical impact of inequality. Rich neighbourhoods continue to flow the richest families and the best education, and poor neighbourhood prevail the percentage of diverse and poor people. Meanwhile, the poor children are promised a lousy education to build their future on and the rich children are promised their parents perishable savings to live with. Both are set up for failure and in need of cooperation. Lend the “good” teacher’s to “bad” schools, give the “rich” children a tour outside their green-walled cage.

Media refuses to focus in on strangers picking up each other’s garbage when they are tipped over, but makes a point of filming a minuscule part of the collective that do the tipping over of garbage bins. Politicians will keep sprinkling drugs where there aren’t any and conjure criminality where there is love. Do regard these places as economical figures, do minimise us to mere fractions, do compare us to other places, and you will find that it is more beneficial to fix up our neighbourhood than tear it down.

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #3” – 2 June, 2010**

I only handed in two days from my diary to the teacher but I continue to write. It is soothing, comme disent les Anglais. Today he hit me too much. So i have to write in this so i won’t write on mes poignets. Mais ce n'est pas important parce que le gentil from the locker still looks on me sometimes. I was at a school dance and il me jette des coups d'oeil discrets et il pense que je ne m'en rends pas compte… Sometimes he looks when I am in school alone at the cantine. Je ne sais pas, maybe he likes me? Se peut-il qu'il puisse s'intéresser à moi?

I don’t think he has shaved even if it is his last year of college. Teachers love and hate him. His clothes range from black like in Grease and colours comme le cirque! Sometimes he is like the only tache de couleur à l’école grise. C’est une brave bête. He has no limits, pendant ce temps i am beat by my father for not understanding my body. My parents don’t understand i am trapped in skin that is for someone else. I am Harry Styles, but I am not Harry Styles. Je m’appelle Harry, je suis une fille. Mais the only place i hear this truth is from my own lungs. Dad hates me, he hits me more and more now than before because he sees my body growing large but my mind is not in alignment with it. I tell him it is not my fault i howl like a goat, bêle comme une chèvre, but he loves to tell me i am just making it up to destroy his life.

He moved me from my home and friends and it is my fault i have no one in my life, he hits me and tell my mother to not give me food and he wants me to be normal. Je ne comprend pas! And sometimes i believe that he is right and I am not normal. He has many friends and work and maybe we don’t have much money but he has a wife that loves him and a car. The other day I was walking home and he saw me i swear he wanted to run me over if his friend wasn’t coming out of the house waving to him. J’ai peur. Why did God hate me so much? Is He peeing on the english people or on me? No matter, it rains a lot.

I miss France and my people, even though I have no moustache still. The french love me with my green eyes and the curls around my face. I love myself when i am in my home country where i was born and taught everything that I know. Par exemple, i love riding the bike along Marne River et regarder des fleurs. I will go back one day and stay forever.

Il est toujours très difficile de parler de choses qui sont chères pour moi; parce que i like all things that are wrong my father says. So i have learned to only have visual images of things i like rather than describe with words. C’est magnique aussi! Some things cannot be told with language when you can show with action. When I find someone i love i will take them to have chair de poule when water touches the sole of the foot. I will take them on the bike to feel the wind and smell of France France France on them and everywhere around them. I will show them how l’amour swallows them and makes you forget you are putting your rent money on chocolate waffles. Après la tour Eiffel une gauffre, ça coûte les yeux de la tête mais when you are in love it is a fart in silk so it does not matter that the silk is in a one bedroom apartment with rats.

I talk of love because it has destroyed me, oui. It is the person I will love that has made my father hate me, it is the person who will love me that has made my father hate me. He reads the bible every day and even though I have never said a thing it is like he knows since I was born that I am a shame on the Styles family. He reads about the father that killed his son for God, and he says that if I do not obey God he will kill me for him. He says that I am a sinner if I do not behave right but I have never behaved wrong. Is there a difference between behaving right and not behaving wrong, i think my father thinks this. On reste toujours surpris quand je dis que je n'ai jamais eu de copain et très rares sont ceux à qui j'ai avoué que je n'avais jamais eu de relations sexuelles, ni même de premier baiser. Why does he believe I have done things when i cannot skip school because he tells the teachers he has seen me smoking and want them to keep an eye on me. And when I finish school he is outside every day. He will drive while i walk sometimes in the cold or in the heat, it does not matter. My lips have never touched a thing other than food and the back of his hand.

I will move away from here if it is the last thing I do. Or kill him.

**Louis**

**“Child abuse” – 16 January, 2014**

Since I have decided to treat myself to a week in Paris this month I have decided to do some research on its current issues. There was a lot that I could have chosen to write about but one topic that struck me the most was the homophobic movement that has been growing in France. Almost 300.000 people marched in Paris against homosexual couples being allowed the rights to raise children. In a sense I was happy that so many people had crossed the normal barriers such as religion, ethnicity, and political orientation to gather against something they felt so strongly about. It kind of reignited the hope that one day we could all gather to protest against the opposite of what they were protesting.

I do understand that children are produced my male and female genitalia but is that where parenting begins and finishes? Is the fact that homosexuals cannot produce biological children with each other the real issue? In that case will we have to force infertile heterosexual couples to split up as well? The fact is that like many things in the world that encounters hate in such a large magnitude it is due to misinformation or lack thereof.

In college there was this guy that always looked tattered and beat up. His father would sit outside in his car with his heated seats and drive next to his son that was too hungry and always too tired to walk the entire distance. The father was a white heterosexual man that had married a French woman he had met in university and had a child with after two years of marriage. He followed the textbook rules of a cishet* white guy life but still he was inept in dealing with his child. My aim is not towards heterosexual parents but towards the idea that ones sexuality determines ones ability to raise a child. Bad parents can be found across all sexualities, gender identities, ethnicities, religions, and demographics.

The reason behind the “gay-parent-hate” is rooted more superficially than anyone can guess. It stems from the fear of the unknown. You would not plummet into unknown waters if you can avoid it. Therefore the solution does not lie in more protests with no answers to questions that are not being dared to be asked. The LGTBQ-community has done a great job in the much needed separatism for its members against the white cishet society that has been awful against anyone that has deviated slightly from the norm.

Education does not have to mean a desk with a pen and paper or boring pamphlets that you throw away. Education of alternative families can be brought straight to people’s homes through media. TV programmes such as Modern Family and the short-lived The New Normal, although they perpetuate stereotypical homosexual marriages, they do benefit in normalising samesex couples and samesex families.

*Cishet: Google it.

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #47” – 3 November, 2012**

J’ai mal à la tête.

How many times I have promised to protect myself from this man but he strikes me again and again. My grasp of English has become better and I have learned how to separate the two languages in my brain. Le langue d’amour Francaise, et le langue de mon papa… Papa est fou comme un jeune chien. And even more crazy with time I have found out.

But I have learned to swallow and continue on with my day because this is temporary and this is not me and this is not where I will stay. Now I know who I am. Je m’appelle Harry et je suis une fille dans un body of a tall dark and handsome boy. I know that I have good looks because the girls have started to notice. They try to talk to me but they don’t understand I have only looked upon anyone else once and he has left college a year ago.

Now I have become braver with who I am. For example, I have dared to take my mothers lipstick and I apply it sometimes when I know I am alone. When I stand naked in the bathroom my hands go on my chest and I know they are swollen even if you cannot see it. In my braver moments I have found out that I become instantly drunk on wine and that red is my favourite. Sometimes I dress in nothing but socks and a crown I found behind the theatre scene and hide in the bathroom. I am the queen of my presence. If my parents aren’t home I like to take out my diary and write in it like now. Otherwise I love to do something else, something I have found I like more than touching myself like the rest of the boys do. I feel so naughty, c’est très terrible mais… c’est un sentiment profond. I have to go do it again now that I am writing about it. I am so happy to have found wine and a cheap vibrator that I let slide between my own legs. **This is Louis and Harry.**

**Louis**

**“Sex trade in Europe” – 26 September, 2014**

More than 80% of the prostitutes in France are controlled by prostitution networks. They are primarily foreign, undocumented, and working for a larger network than the streets they walk. In France, the laws on prostitution differs massively from the very organised one we have right here in Great Ole’ Britain. The title ‘pimp’ can be given to anyone in close contact with the working prostitute, anyone that spends money or is funded by the money of a prostitute is deemed a pimp. This is not the point of the continued entry but a factoid that caught my interest and I thought I would share. Prostitution is mainly discussed in terms of female workers, since they pose the larger part of its spectrum. I would like to delve into a more unsanctioned and the hidden territory of male prostitution.

The men I met in the red districts were all desperately poor and vulnerable, yet edgy and masculine. They would sway between the two characteristics until they got close and could guess which type you would like more and lean to that personality more. Most of the men I approached would back away and twitch fervently, as if they knew I wasn’t there to purchase anything illegal. On one occasion a man a few metres away walked up to me with his gun directed right at me and told me to stop snooping on Horan’s territory or I would hear from Payne very soon. These names went straight over my head and I returned the next day with a dilemma. The same man with the gun showed up and I pulled out a wad of cash for a few minutes with one of his workers.

The worker was 26 and from Jamaica. He was heavily built and told me proudly that he was a giver in most instances but would mind getting if the buyer was good for it. I asked him about his day to day life and very surprisingly it did not differ much from mine, except that I am single and he is not. He would wake up at eight in the morning and run for an hour with his husband. When they would come back home he would make themselves breakfast and he would do the washing up and his husband would go to work. I asked him if his husband knew about his profession and a long silence ensued before he answered that he didn’t know. “I suspect that he does but we refrain from talking about it,” he breathed. “It is easy to be blind when I shower him with money and fuck him into ecstasy.”

The man’s friend saw us coupling up in the car and decided to see if he could join and I pulled out a few extra bills and opened up the car door for him. He looked strangely familiar and I asked if he had been on any porn-sites I might have caught or the news. The familiar bloke was younger, barely probably 18 guessing by his poorly formulated ideas, but his body pushed for 20. I asked him if his daily routine and it would involve a late morning and working out before cleaning himself for a day of work. It surprised me how good the working conditions were for them, and I shared my thoughts. The Jamaican man said that it was good as long as you stayed out of trouble, then pointed at me and said I was trouble and now it may not be good. The younger fellow writhed and crossed his legs, which forced me to notice their outfits.

The older man wore a swamp-green wifebeater, he had a rag on his head, and his eyes were drawn out with eyeliner. The younger guy wore a short skirt with hot pink laced lingerie peeking beneath it, and I asked if I had misgendered him. She said yes, but due to the low amount of male prostitutes she had been placed in this area and grouped with the men. But she remained in her female attire since she found some men also liked that. I asked her if she could draw any parallels between female and male prostitution and she laughed and told me it would cost me extra if I was to keep her for that long. We made an appointment for the next night, but I never saw her again. I scouted the area for a week and remained vigilant of running in with any sketchy types in the business, but I never found her again. The following week I extended my trip and started looking in other parts of famous places of prostitution but I never saw her again.

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #56” –4 May, 2013**

I am in France. My money is scarce, comme disent les Anglais. I took my crazy ugly fat disastrous father's money and took a one way train to London, and then Paris! It turns out, he is the failure because I didn't find enough money to last me a week.

J'adore. Je suis amoureuse. J'oublie the smell, the taste, the ecstatic emotions Paris can put you in. Right now, I am staying at our old neighbours place. Mais, I know that I cannot forever. She is a nice woman, that let's me dress in whatever I please. She smokes a lot and her name is Éclair. Her mum loved pastries. Moi aussi, maybe I'll call myself Tarte ou autre chose. But she wants me to work for her and that's when I realised how poor we are. J'envisage a beautiful place in Paris, quoique far away from the central. Maybe it's for the best that I get to see this. Poverty makes the heart grow fonder, comme disent les Anglais, non? Je ne sais pas.

Our old apartment has been remodelled and been bought by the neighbour. Her daughters are there working. I don't think they want to be there, elles sont comme l’oiseau, beautiful but caged in a thorny prison. Elles sont des travailleuses de nuit. And their mother wants me to work with them because she has many looking for my... sort. Hommes in women clothes, mais je ne suis pas une homme. They are birds in prison, I am stuck in the barbed wire but je ne suis pas une oiseau. Je ne suis pas une homme, mais ils disaint je ne suis pas COMMES les hommes. They don't understand. Merde. I have tried getting a job at the old bakery my mother owned but the new owners seem to flow more cocaine than anything else.

Me and her got drunk and she tried to touch me. But she doesn't understand I don't work down there. It is like appendicitis, an extra skin that has no work on my body. I wish I could cut it. I remember trying to cut it when I was a child mais ma mère stopped me before I could do it. The woman I live with kissed me and my mouth was left like a murder scene. My lipstick, her lipstick, all red of crime and ashes from the cigarettes. She asked if it was because she was old but my lips were frozen on her cheek where she had left me. I was so scared. The saliva between my teeth were connected to her lip and she pushed me aside to break our connection. I went to the bathroom and cried. Je ne suis pas un homme. But no one believes me and if they do they don't understand. I wake up with a bare chest where I know there should be an extra layer of fat. I look down on myself and it is standing straight up as a painful memory to not forget I was born in the wrong skin. Sometimes I force myself to touch it and at least try to love myself but I cannot. I cry and want to be like all the rest but it doesn't feel right. It should feel good but all I do is cry all the time. And mostly, people just don't understand my speech. But I am just a bit slower than people. My tongue lies limp in my mouth, useless, just like my cock lies limp between my thighs.

**Louis**

**“A Tell All: The Parisian Prostitution Ring, Part I” – 24 December, 2014**

Posing as a desperately poor and aspiring pimp I entered into the murky world of the Parisian prostitution ring. The Jamaican man I had met, a few days prior to my idea of going undercover to write an exposé of the filthy underground movement, introduced me to his boss, Xander, that was always stood in the corner. I asked of him to take me under his wing and teach me the trade and in return I promised not to compete with him when I set off my own thing. For the sake of anonymity and security reasons all the names are made up.

The first question Xander asked me was whether I would consider both working as a lad of the night and his garçon, a title I had not chosen for myself. Xander was French but had East European heritage which laced his English accent when he spoke to me. First, he was wary of my interest in the sex trade and questioned my intentions, but having been poor I revived that feeling of absolute hopelessness and played it up. There was an immediate connection between us that built on both of our unspoken experiences of poverty. We both know that no one gets into this business if poverty isn’t the threatening factor.

Xander allowed me to follow him for a few nights. His schedule was very much the same and I came to realise he was the small fish that only oversaw a small portion of the massive Parisian prostitution goldmine. The men Xander guarded catered to a mainly white male clientele, who always swore they had never done this before and just wanted to try it out once, even though they were regulars. Some asked if I was up for business but I refused each time, which always seemed to agitate Xander. The workers would drive away with the men but never further than a block away, and business and payment always went through Xander. In the district I was in, there were always about five men there. Some would disappear but almost instantly they would be replaced.

After a few days I came back to my motel-room, since I worried they would follow me and think there was something fishy about me if I lived in a hotel, and found that Xander had slipped a burner phone in my jacket pocket. It rang almost exactly when I locked my room door after me and the caller-ID showed a number I did not recognise. The man on the other end had a gruff voice and asked me if I was Louis William Tomlinson. I confirmed. He explained that Xander worked with him and that he was very interested in meeting with me. I was told to call back when I was ready fordinner.

I called back almost immediately and waited for directions, rather than giving me the address and letting me find my way he kept me on the phone and directed me through the streets. In retrospect, I realise it was his way of informing me that he knew exactly where I was. His instructions finally led me to a large villa on the outskirts of Paris, it stood out against the cracked buildings and abandoned football fields around it. I knocked thrice on the door and hung up the phone and waited for it to open. A tall woman opened the door, her legs were elongated by the black heels on her feet that klick-klacked under her as she led me across from the door and deep into the house. It looked a lot like the house in The Nanny, but she was the very antithesis of Fran Fine. 

The gruff voice I had heard via the receiver greeted me with a smile and walked me into his office. It was very extreme and what I would imagine someone that had not been born into money to choose for himself. The office was chockfull of maple wood and diamond handles. This was nothing to Xander’s elaborate choice of clothes and Aventador. I sensed panic rise in my throat but I swiftly dismissed my uncalled for emotions and sat down for a face to face with what I thought was the head of the operation. Before we could say anything there was a knock on the door behind me and he smiled, “Ah, the delivery is here.” His French accent weighed heavy in his poorly-articulated English words, I almost missed what he had said.

In walked seven men, or rather boys, that were merely dressed in socks and shoes. They walked tightly behind each other with an unfazed look on their faces. Their eyes were circled with dark purple rings, not quite a black eye but something very similar, as if they had been knocked out by life rather than by a fist. I sat quietly and tried to look away from their naked torsos as the boss-man that had invited me walked towards them. He had a marker in his hand and looked at each one, turned and touched and investigated, and marked them with a letter. There were two that were marked with an X and they started crying and pleading for another chance, but they were whisked away by guards. It was sickening to see these naked men being treated as cargo, being swapped andplaced as their employers wished.

“Work or get the fuck out of my ring,” he threatened and sat down to clip off the tip of his cigar. “My boss knows who you are and has no problem with… comme disent les Anglais: get rid of you.” It was very mild in comparison with Godfather and Scarface, yet the thrill and fear was much the same. He went on to explain that no one ever regretted getting into the business, “You will be grateful to me for even giving you a chance, soon you will be able to buy yourself a better outfit.” I took the slap, disguised as a caress, and stepped out of his office to go back to my ashey room. It was almost 5am.

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #72” –1 January, 2014**

I was kicked out six months ago but the incident has left me le cœur brisé. Everyone I try to lean on end up being des connards! There is no one I can depend on except myself. Mais, I have trained my English every day but now it is a new year and I have decided to try to work. There is a surgery I need and it will cost a lot, maybe God made me this way to use it to make me how I am supposed to be. Ça fait du sens? Même si it is this way I will have to work hard to get to where I want to be. I have worked my first shift now and I am in a nice hotel in a nice robe on a nice bed and writing in my diary. My client has fallen asleep. He was not good to me but I found joy in being mistreated. I do not deserve gentleness for doing a dirty job I should not be doing.

But he kissed me at twelve and said I was beautiful. I almost believed him.

It started out sweet and I told him I had never done this before. He smiled and said he liked fresh meat the most. I felt like a baby goat in his care but I realised I was lamb and he was taking me to be slaughtered. It started when he stopped kissing me and wanted to start, my heart was beating à 174-180 battements à la minute, j'étais rouge, j'avais chaud mais I had to take off my skirt and do my job. He said he didn’t like to see my face and to be on the floor. I could hear him take off the condom he promised to wear, but I was too scared to say anything. It hurt a lot, I cried but said it was how I moaned. After digging his nails in my back I knew he liked that I was in pain so I let myself scream then it was okay and other parts started to be painful. He went for so long that my knees bleeded against the carpeted floor and he wouldn’t let me put a pillow under my knees like he had. I was treated like an animal but when he turned me over to “take care of me” he apologised and said he really liked men to cry for him. Then he let me cry into his chest and we stayed on the floor. Before we went to the bed he licked the blood off my knees and said I had been really good.

He wasn’t gentle.

But I had not told him that he was my first. Not my first kiss, since Paris had offered me many people that would take the initiative without asking what I wanted. But my first sex. Finally, I can say that I am not a virgin. I hope to God that he had no diseases. Or that he has ruined me forever. Is it supposed to be this way the first time? Girls would hurt the first time. Maybe it is supposed to be this way for girls that were born like me.

**Louis**

**“A Tell All: The Parisian Prostitution Ring, Part II” – 24 December, 2014**

The day after my interview at the whorehouse I found a paper literally daggered on my door, the white parchment was tainted with a beautiful handwriting in ink. “Decide tonight or don’t bother coming back, Sincerely Xander.” It was obviously not from Xander, but I was getting the ropes of things and I understood that Xander was only low bearing fruit so if they sawed at his branch his fall wouldn’t damage him much. I decided to continue my day like normal and went to meet Xander at our regular meeting spot, as I had expected he made no remark of the note left on my motel room because he probably didn’t know about it. There wasn’t nothing much at the motel room since I was playing poor and desperate, all my things were kept at a hotel in the city.

After work, around 1am – it was a bad business night – the guys rounded up to receive half of what they had earned from Xander. They stalked off with as much as €400 in cash, tucked in unimaginable places. One of the guys, Marlo, invited me to one of the parties he was booked for at 2am, and we hurried to Xander’s brand new Bentley to get dropped off at some upscale building. It was a renown hotel that I will leave unmentioned due to legal issues. But it was large and beautiful and maybe a bit overrated due to its famous heiresses.

Marlo asked me if I was up to making €1000 that night, I asked if we were going to split and he said he was offering me the 30% he didn’t want. He explained that to afford his brother’s medical school bills in America he had to take a few private gigs. I listened quietly as he explained that his parents had died in a small Portuguese town when he was very little, after that him and his brother were shuttled off to America to live with their austere uncle. When he came out as gay he was kicked out and took the first plane out here. He studied wine and become a sommelier but after his brother informed him of his academical success, Marlo took it upon himself to pay for his brother. I asked him how he had been introduced to the work, he simply said that tan men either find a way to live off their looks or have rich parents. Marlo asked me if I was still up for it and I denied as gracefully as I could and stalked off to the bar where I thought I had seen the prostitute that had vanished.

It was packed with people, beautiful women in mink coats and men with Moriarty-type suits. They all smelled of Chanel and I was an oddity in my dirty sneakers and green 90s bomber jacket. No one payed me any mind and they kept to their own conversations in fluent, sing-songy french. I went to the bar and after eyeing the prices faced the exact opposite side and started walking back to Marlo. “Can I watch?” I asked him, and he shrugged and said his client would probably even pay for that. We went to the eighth floor and Marlo took out a card he had picked up and opened the door at the end of the hall. A man with grey hair sat at the end of the bed, shoulders slumped over and eyes swallowed by the aftermath of some drug. Marlo ran up to the man and kissed him giggling, he sat up in his lap continued to massage through the man’s chest. The man payed me no mind and I sat down, taking a swig off the already open vodka bottle. It was all very sweet and was more like taking someone home for a quickie than the nasty sex I had imagined, the difference was we left €3000 richer.

Marlo told me that was his favourite client, he actually enjoyed being with him. He said, he was one of the few that let him keep the condom on during oral sex. “Some men try to sneak in without a condom on when I’m bent over and can’t see what they’re doing. But the danger is kind of enthralling.” We didn’t make it far before we were stopped by two large men and I was escorted to the 14th floor of the hotel. I tired to stalk away but they ended up dragging me to where I had been requested, I felt like I was going to die that night.

We walked into a large suite that let out into a living room with half-naked men and women. The man from the pompous office sat on one side of the room, his slim figure was gruesome and something in his look made vomit rise to my throat. The lost girl was sat on the lap of another man, we can call him Tim, making out with a woman seated between Tim’s legs. The lost girl looked at me and gave a week smile before he turned to tease his mouth against Tim’s pants zipper.

The men behind me pushed me down on my knees and I instinctively put my hands behind my back for a straighter posture. Tim motioned with his hands for someone to bring something out and they came out with my bag that I had hidden away at the hotel in the city. They emptied it over my head and claimed to know who I was. Then he pushed off the lost girl from his knee and the boy remained on the floor. He was saying that he knew that I was there to save him but that I could forget to save my highschool crush, he was making them too much money. **This is LouisAndHarry.**

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #84” –26 September, 2013**

Help me! Je suis toujours amoureuse de lui et le serai à jamais. I thought I had forgotten about him and that I was not going to see him again but he is here and I am having these feelings of absolute bliss. His blue eyes and clean shaved cheeks, his skin is like a baby but he makes me feel like the safest person in the world. I have not dared to reach out and touch him yet. My fear is that he is not real so I let him always start. But he does not want to start because he knows that I need to heal first.

Permettez-moi de commencer au tout début: after that night I was in love with the job kind of because I thought he will come tomorrow for our meeting and maybe I can fool him to come the day after again. But they called me and said that now a better client wanted me and that it would give me a lot more money. I can’t say no since it is not me who decides what I do with my body anyway. The next day I go to work and I try to hurry so I can meet him but the two men chain me and they do things all night and really slow. If it wasn’t for those blue eyes and thinking about him to get through it I think I would have died that night of pain and embarrassment. Yet, they did not finish until so long after our plans were supposed to be. I think I cried the most that night, and not because how my body was tired. My heart had started to break that night.

Then after so many weeks I see him at a party for the boss’ birthday and when he starts walking towards me they yank me away, as if they wanted him to just see me. Because they had told me to stand there first. It was their plan and I was too dumb to figure it. When I walked into the suite I knew something was wrong because they took turn in kissing me and slapping me. They felt every inch of my body and places I had never touched myself. It was their way of saying good bye to my body. Then I was in Tim’s lap and he was telling me to kiss a girl who was 16. She was between his legs and whispered that she had never done this before and I kissed her under her ear and told her to be calm. When Louis walked in I didn’t care because I had to do what Tim wanted to girl to do so she would be free. Even though she was there and it was her job, if I can take the fall so someone can be innocent that little longer I will always do it. My teeth where at the zipper and I wanted to do it fast. I knew how Tim worked now and my mouth could automatically do what he wanted now, he had taught me like a little student. But he got angry and still I could feel him twitch, I have seen him have sex with blood on his hands so he is that type of man.

Then he threw me away and said that Louis was here because he loved me but Louis didn’t know anything. He was more innocent than anyone else in the room, but I stayed in my place like a good dog waiting for my owner to give me a command or throw a frisbee I will catch with my teeth. Then he told the men to throw Louis away in the water and I had to say something, and even if they would kill me maybe they would let Louis go. But instead they said they would kill us both. I was relieved because I knew how they work so I could get us out. Then we escaped them and came to Louis’ hotel room. I was so happy when he said he was doing it for an article and not in fact a scumbag that was looking to make money off people being used as garbage bins. This was all a few months ago. Very much happened but he told me that I will return with him if I want and that he will protect me until I feel better. He also said that I can do what I want but he would enjoy me to join him. Then he said sorry a lot and did not mean to make it sound like he was paying me to stay with him. I laughed and said it is like an old friend helping me and he nodded, then he said my english was good in the car but I can’t remember saying anything only running and my heart beat in my brain!

**Louis**

**“A Tell All: The Parisian Prostitution Ring, Part III” – 24 December, 2014**

It all came back to me in a flash. The lost girl was someone I knew and had used in my previous articles numerous times. It is the same guy that borrowed my locker for a day, the same guy that had been abused by his father, the same guy I had misgendered when I first met Xander and his crew. It was amazing how our lives had parted all that time ago and now come back to meet, it seemed before it would shortly end. His eyelashes lay heavily on his eyes and he avoided me as much as I tried to catch his gaze and try to communicate with him somehow. I didn’t know what to say but I had to say something, before we were going to die.

“My crush?” It came out infuriated, but my emotions were a mix of fear and anger. I was angry with myself for having roped myself into this situation and into a market I knew was dangerous. Tim stood up, and stepped over the cowering girl that was too small to be affected by his sudden movement.

“Liez-lui les pieds et les mains, et jetez-le dans le mer,” Tim demanded. I didn’t understand much but it seemed to catch the lost girls attention, who snapped his head up and for the first time and I registered her face. She looked weak and famished, her eyes were purplish just like the boys that had entered the office the day before. It had all seemed so long ago compared to that moment, and it is now that I write it that I have made the correlation. They were all sedated by some kind of drug, probably heroin.

The lost girl shot up from her place and started speaking to Tim, she was playing with his chest and snickering in his ear. Whatever they had said, it must have been pretty awful for her to attempt to save me. The man’s response was a backhanded slap and a kick to her gut, he ordered for her to be taken with me. They tied us by our arms and walked us out of the room and into a small closet where we were kept for less than hour. It seemed as if they were stowing us away to make some arrangements for our departure.

I asked the girl what they were saying and she told me to shut up, apparently she was working on getting out of her confinement. Her hands were big but she later explained to me that being a sex worker for over a year had made her an expert in getting out of confinements. My tasteless humour attempted to joke and say that maybe she could become an illusionist when we got away from there. Then her hands were on mine and she was untying my restrains. She told me that we had to pretend we were still confined and that I had to follow her instructions precisely. I kept the joke about her resembling Liam Neeson’s character in Taken to myself and nodded. They took us and threw us in the trunk. All she told me was to “shut the fuck up and stay calm,” which was very hard since I did not want to die at such a young age and was sweating profusely under my green bomber jacket that I had picked up from goodwill when I was 19. It made me think of my mother and my sisters and how foolish it was of me to think I was invincible. But I also remembered the €1000 I had been offered and how that would equate to a months payment. The car started moving and even though it wasn’t going at a fast speed my stomach felt sick and I was sure I was going to puke on the back of the head of the girl curled beside me.

“You see, these prostitution tycoons are obsessed with America and American pimps of the 50s,” the not so lost girl was explaining to me. “They buy their cars in America, they buy their worker’s cars from America, and you see that in the early 21st century there came a law that forced all cars in America to be built with a trunk release. Which is right…” She stopped mid sentences and pulled her hand to her front and towards some kind of illuminating yellow lever. The trunk popped open and she jumped onto the road and dragged me with her. There was a car that was following us and it pressed down on the vehicle horn and swerved towards us. The girl grabbed my arm and we were running towards the darkness and in between paths and streets I had never been. She zigzagged through people and I followed as best I could, but her hand wouldn’t let me go even when my lungs were too exasperated to continue.

When we finally felt confident to stop I explained that I was a reporter and that I had a room at a hotel in the city. We walked hurriedly towards it and went immediately to my room which had been booked for another week. I called room service to pay for my visit at my room and fixed for a car to come pick us up at the back entrance. In the meantime I sat her down to ask her some questions and she obliged as long as I would finish the exposé with the last thing she had to say.

First of all, there are two major players in Paris who run most of the business. They are civil with each other but it can get a bit rowdy when the people below them step on each other’s territory. The one she was with we will call X and the other can be named Y. X has a more varied menu for his customers and has mostly high-end workers and clients. Y is an old businessman that is regarded as the founding father for the system on the Parisian streets. Y’s business is directed more at the working-class men and he has therefore a larger area that he has people at. But through his business he has bought a lot of land that X’s business lands on. For example, the hotel we had just been at was built on Y’s property but built by a separate entity, still X has to pay a tax for the work done on Y’s property which he cannot cheat out of because most of X’s clientele are found on Y’s land.

Below X and Y are various workers that count the money and make sure that there are always workers to go around. They also make the major phone calls and moves during legal issues, most of them have juridical backgrounds, and they are payed handsomely if they use that expertise to help the business. These all have private bodyguards, that are usually their relatives or friends and therefore they can count loyalty to be certain. The last authoritative people are workers like Xander, that are given X’s and Y’s old things so the trail always leads to them, they are also the ones that can be found on the streets and with the cash on hand. They are disposable and usually very distant friends of the X and Y ring. And way below them are the actual workers that profit all these people above them. The women have it easier in the sense that they are shuffled between areas less since there is an abundance of a female workforce in sex work whilst the men are forced to sometimes visit three areas per shift.

It’s a dirty and dehumanising work that no one really gets into because they want to. Often times they are forced by the cold hand of the government that does not care for its population. And mostly they are pressured into it by the poverty of their families and the burden to provide for a relative, the not so lost girl tells me and I remember Marlo telling me about his brother. It all seems a lifetime away but it had barely been 24-hours between him telling me and sitting in my hotel room to continue my journey to another country and then beyond.

**Harry**

**“Diary entry #89” – 24 December, 2014**

Help me! Je suis toujours amoureux de lui et le serai à jamais. I thought I had forgotten about him and that I was not going to see him again but he is here and I am having these feelings of absolute bliss. His blue eyes and clean shaved cheeks, his skin is like a baby but he makes me feel like the safest person in the world. I have not dared to reach out and touch him yet. My fear is that he is not real so I let him always start. But he does not want to start because he knows that I need to heal first.

Permettez-moi de commencer au tout début: after that night I was in love with the job kind of because I thought he will come tomorrow for our meeting and maybe I can fool him to come the day after again. But they called me and said that now a better client wanted me and that it would give me a lot more money. I can’t say no since it is not me who decides what I do with my body anyway. The next day I go to work and I try to hurry so I can meet him but the two men chain me and they do things all night and really slow. If it wasn’t for those blue eyes and thinking about him to get through it I think I would have died that night of pain and embarrassment. Yet, they did not finish until so long after our plans were supposed to be. I think I cried the most that night, and not because how my body was tired. My heart had started to break that night.

Then after so many weeks I see him at a party for the boss’ birthday and when he starts walking towards me they yank me away, as if they wanted him to just see me. Because they had told me to stand there first. It was their plan and I was too dumb to figure it. When I walked into the suite I knew something was wrong because they took turn in kissing me and slapping me. They felt every inch of my body and places I had never touched myself. It was their way of saying good bye to my body. Then I was in Tim’s lap and he was telling me to kiss a girl who was 16. She was between his legs and whispered that she had never done this before and I kissed her under her ear and told her to be calm. When Louis walked in I didn’t care because I had to do what Tim wanted to girl to do so she would be free. Even though she was there and it was her job, if I can take the fall so someone can be innocent that little longer I will always do it. My teeth where at the zipper and I wanted to do it fast. I knew how Tim worked now and my mouth could automatically do what he wanted now, he had taught me like a little student. But he got angry and still I could feel him twitch, I have seen him have sex with blood on his hands so he is that type of man.

Then he threw me away and said that Louis was here because he loved me but Louis didn’t know anything. He was more innocent than anyone else in the room, but I stayed in my place like a good dog waiting for my owner to give me a command or throw a frisbee I will catch with my teeth. Then he told the men to throw Louis away in the water and I had to say something, and even if they would kill me maybe they would let Louis go. But instead they said they would kill us both. I was relieved because I knew how they work so I could get us out. Then we escaped them and came to Louis’ hotel room. I was so happy when he said he was doing it for an article and not in fact a scumbag that was looking to make money off people being used as garbage bins. This was all a few months ago. Very much happened but he told me that I will return with him if I want and that he will protect me until I feel better. He also said that I can do what I want but he would enjoy me to join him. Then he said sorry a lot and did not mean to make it sound like he was paying me to stay with him. I laughed and said it is like an old friend helping me and he nodded, then he said my english was good in the car but I can’t remember saying anything only running and my heart beat in my brain!

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you think. I'm genuinely interested in YOUR opinion. Be harsh, whip me with ropes laced with burning coal and spikes, tell me the truth!


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